Religious fundamentalism Islamic, Judaic and Christian is pushing back against progress toward equal rights for women. The fundamentalists want to restore patriarchal dominance and are gaining ground in the Muslim world, Israel and the United States inside the Republican Party,…
Tag: Lawrence Davidson
In Case You Missed…
Some of our special stories in August followed the strange twists and turns of Campaign 2012, the prospects for war with Iran, and the role of government in improving lives and solving problems.
Netanyahu’s ‘Red Line’ on Obama
President Obama has infuriated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by rejecting his demand for a “red line” on war with Iran if it achieves the “capability” to build a nuclear weapon. The clash has led Netanyahu to brazenly intervene in…
Did Anti-Muslim Film Cross Legal Line?
The makers of an anti-Islamic propaganda video achieved what they apparently intended, inciting a violent reaction among Muslim and creating new tensions between Islam and the West. But the killing of four U.S. diplomatic personnel raises questions about whether legal lines…
Walking the Jerusalem Plank
In reversing the decision of the Democratic platform committee to omit a plank declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel, President Obama may have intended to deny the Republicans another attack line, but he also added to the disenchantment of some…
Whitewashing Rachel Corrie’s Death
Two recent rulings, one in Israel blaming American Rachel Corrie for her own death while obstructing the demolition of Palestinian homes and another in America absolving torturers in the murder of detainees, suggest that national security trumps justice and international…
Forgetting the Why of the New Deal
Until the Great Crash of 1929, the federal government did little to regulate the power of Wall Street as it precipitated cycles of boom and bust that ruined the lives of many Americans. That history is now being forgotten as Republicans…
The Know-Nothings Ride Again
In 2012, the political descendants of America’s Know-Nothings demonstrated that they had seized control of the Republican Party, which for much of the past six decades has held the White House and looks to reclaim that immense power again, as…
A Map’s Inconvenient Truth
The charge “anti-Semitism” is thrown around loosely by defenders of Israel as a way to discredit legitimate criticism and sometimes even the expression of inconvenient facts as happened recently regarding a map showing the steady erosion of Palestinian land, writes Lawrence…
America’s Twisted Notion of Freedom
In America, “freedom” now means the right to inflict harm on the community, whether it’s the freedom of Wall Street bankers to gamble recklessly, the freedom of the rich to shut factories and off-shore jobs or the freedom to swagger around…